


Faiths

by rm (arem)



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where Athelstan keeps considering and eventually acquiesces to Ragnar and Lagertha's invitation into their bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faiths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneiriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/gifts).



> Since Athelstan is technically property of Ragnar and drinking a bit of Viking ale in this, his consent may be enthusiastic but it is also incredibly dubious.

There are many indignities to being Ragnar Lothbrook’s slave, among them that Ragnar, his household, and his people are all exhausting. Ragnar most of all. There is a slyness to him, as if he is always smiling to some devil who lurks like a pet in the not-so-far corners of his vision. Athelstan is not afraid of Ragnar; he is afraid of whatever it is that Ragnar is smiling at.

This condition is not unique to Ragnar. Athelstan has noticed it in his boat-builder too. But where Ragnar may be on passing friendly terms with the infernal, Floki is of it. Athelstan has seen it come upon him in great fits of laughter and cleverness, the urge to climb, and to kill, and to marvel at God’s world all bound up in a strange and dreadful roar like the ocean.

All in all, Athelstan is glad to be owned by Ragnar, if he must be owned by anything but his faith in the Lord. Ragnar is a nearly rational man, curious to a danger. There’s hope for Athelstan in that, and if he can hold on to his own faith, he suspects the opportunity to share it. In that, he can see God’s work, and so it is easier to endure.

There are, however, so many assaults. His brethren, the other monks and priests, do not survive. Many die simply of the cold. Or perhaps fright. This is, Athelstan knows, surely God’s mercy. He is less sure of where the mercy lurks for those of his brothers who come to other fates, strung up by their captors for what he can only assume is sport, disobedience, or some matter with the too many supposed gods of this land.

Ragnar just smiles at all of it, as if even his native land is made of peculiarities he does not yet understand. Athelstan feels unpeaceful in the face of it, even if he also suspects that the man does not approve of the waste. He’s just not sure if the objection is to the waste of men or the waste of time to kill them.

Not that Ragnar minds wasting time with other things. Drink, arguing with his brother, plotting, his wife Lagertha. Athelstan does not judge him for Lagertha, in part because he’s afraid of her; she can fight as well as Ragnar. And God has given husband and wife pleasure of each other, probably even if they are not married under His eyes because at least they are married. 

It’s just that Athelstan can _hear_ them.

It is not unpleasant exactly. Or tedious. Although it is also both, until they come to him and ask him to join them, as if he is not a slave. As if he is not a monk. 

When he says no, they leave, laughing less, and he is left to dwell on what it means to be both a slave and a monk, and wonder, truly, how much these conditions are related. Faith is a necessity. But it is also a choice.

They do not ask him to bed again.

It annoys him. If Faith is a daily choice, why shouldn’t everything be? And having them to continue to reject would be far better than having them to dwell on, especially as Ragnar mocks him, gently, only because he can’t be bothered to do more. Lagertha is hostile, as if she is more unclear than ever what in this world or the next Athelstan is for. When he considers her perspective, he really can’t blame her.

“Why did you do that?” he asks Ragnar eventually when the man is trying to get him drunk again out of no real purpose other than boredom and habit.

“Why did I do what, priest?” He says it through a smile sly at his corner imps.

“You know.”

“Do I?”

Aethelstan rolls his eyes.

“I keep you for your language skills,” Ragnar points out. “So you’ll have to use them if you want to question me.”

“Never mind.”

Ragnar bursts into laughter just short of a roar. It’s the type of unpredictability from him that Aethelstan loathes. “Oh, priest. Will your god be mad if you say aloud that I asked you to fuck my wife?”

Lagertha appears with her own ale from where she has been tending to food over the hearth, and she pushes her hand heavily against the back of Ragnar’s skull. “No. _I_ asked him to fuck your wife,” she says to him. Then, to Athelstan, “We thought you might like it better if I seemed shy.”

“I....” He doesn’t know where to begin. The idea that he has preferences implies he has the knowledge to form specific ideas about exactly how he would like to sin. He does not, except for how he remembers her leg, far more than peeking out between furs, and the sheen of sweat on Ragnar’s body as he’d grinned and offered him his wife.

It’s all quite too much, and by the time it occurs to him to take another long draught of ale to prevent himself form saying anything more, Athelstan realizes he has, in fact said a good deal aloud. None of it likely coherent, not because of the ale but because of the circumstance.

Lagertha’s laugh isn’t less menacing than Ragnar’s, just lighter and more direct.

“You should ask,” Ragnar says simply.

“Slaves don’t ask for things,” Athelstan says. It’s a poor defense from sin, even if a deeply relevant truth.

“I don’t want to fuck you because you are a slave." Each and every word of Lagertha's sounds an insult for some lack of cleverness. 

‘Why then?” Athelstan says lightly as if any of this is reasonable.

“My husband is not the only one who likes to raid and plunder," she says and her tone proves she knows the corner devils at least well as her husband. Perhaps, for her, Ragnar is even one of them. "Just because I did not go on Floki’s boat does not mean I do not get to explore new lands too.”

“Your world is not my world,”

Athelstan says, the simple phrase how he has evaded being forced to engage in judgement over and over again.

“How is that?” Ragnar asks, impatient and perhaps bored with his own cleverness. “When you are here? In my house? The rope cut from your neck, and you eating our food, drinking our ale, as we discuss a bargain your god doesn’t know how to uphold his end of. You are right. He is not greedy. If he were, maybe he’d hold you closer. Now, I am done with talk, and I am going to bed. I imagine my wife is too. You can join us or not.”

He leaves the table unceremoniously. Lagertha shrugs at Athelstan before getting up to follow him, not because she is obedient – that is not a thing expected of her nor a concept she seems inclined to entertain – but because she has clearly grown as tired of the conversation as her husband.

Left alone to make his own choices, Athelstan finds it harder to hear his God or his vows. Without the explicit temptation of their whispering insistence, there is so much less to say no to. God is forgiving and faith must be chosen.

And, perhaps, a test always passed is not test enough.


End file.
